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Why You’ll Want to Visit Rotterdam in 2018

Home to the largest and busiest port in Europe, the Netherlands’ “second city” is now attracting a fleet of designers, artists and architects who are reshaping the Dutch city into an epicenter of urban innovation

By

Megan Conway

Jan. 22, 2018 9:42 a.m. ET

FOUR YEARS AGO, Daan Roosegaarde wanted to build the world’s largest vacuum cleaner. The artist-architect envisioned a 23-foot-tall air purifier powerful enough to suck up pollution from city parks using about as much electricity as a plug-in teakettle. Families, couples and friends could breathe easy in the soot-free oxygen surrounding his Smog Free Tower. The only trouble was finding someone willing to fund the machine’s construction. “Sometimes somebody comes with a question, and sometimes we ask ourselves a question,” says 38-year-old Roosegaarde, lanky, blond and amply caffeinated on a stormy afternoon in the Dutch...